


dreamt the shape of your mouth

by traiteuse (merriell)



Series: saccharine / disinterest [2]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-11
Updated: 2019-07-11
Packaged: 2020-06-26 11:04:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19766878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merriell/pseuds/traiteuse
Summary: Billy Hargrove dreams.It's full of trees, full of magic, and it has Steve Harrington's name all over it.So you can't blame him from being obsessed, really.





	dreamt the shape of your mouth

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Fall Out Boy's American Beauty / American Psycho.
> 
> Still taking a bit of the lore from M. Stiefvater's The Raven Cycle.
> 
> This is mostly set at the same time/before the first fic and written alongside it, which is why it's so fast, but the next instalment will move the plot forward.

“We’re moving to Indiana,” Neil Hargrove says one night, during dinner, his eyes glowing against the dim light, a microwave dinner in front of him. He’s holding Susan’s hand with his left hand, and she looks paler than ever even in the lack of light.

The sentence sounds a little less like a set of words, sounds a little more like _punishment_.

Billy stares at Max across of him, her jaw tightening. Waiting for her to push, to say something, because although Billy’s always the one who gets the blunt of the anger that lives under Neil like a second skin, she’s always the defiant one, ready to lash out even when Billy doesn’t have the guts to. He’ll convince himself because it’s not been long since Max has been living with them. But it has been years. Billy’s still rebelling the way he could, slipping into the house high off his mind most days, but she’s the one still fighting a war she’s losing, by blind faith alone.

He doesn’t know if he has strength to do so.

But today, she only stabs at the rubber-like meat and simply scowls in silence.

So that leaves Billy to say something.

“You can’t force us to leave all we know for bum-fuck Indiana,” he says, and he waits for the fire to lick his skin.

He’s floating the entire time he’s driving his Camaro across states. Not with weed, of course, Neil would probably recognize the smell of marijuana if he pops his head inside the car and he will take away the keys to Billy’s car as soon as they arrive in Hawkins if he finds out, so it’s the kind of ecstasy that’s leaves no trace nor smell. The kind that leaves his mind fuzzy but aware, the kind that’s way too expensive, but he needs, to dull the pain from his face and the tears from his cheeks.

Being a magician has its perks. The small vial containing the bluish potion is still half-full, bought from a potioneer that he knows from a friend of a friend, costs him half of his savings, but _what the hell_. He’s leaving California. What else would he use it for?

He still feels the buzz of the potion in his veins as he stumbles into the motel that Neil has chosen to be their resting place that night. He doesn’t even bother taking off his shoes or taking the sweat-soaked clothes off his back. Too tired. Too sleepy. Feels too good, like all of his frayed ends are mended and cut, again and again.

Then, Billy Hargrove dreams.

He dreams of trees, of pool of water below the edge of rocky cliffs. He dreams of a brown-haired, taller boy, with pale skin decorated with freckles and moles, looking back at him with his eyes watering. Billy knows he’s scared. He has his foot halfway onto stepping towards the cliff.

The trees whisper, again and again: _come to us, come to us, magician. You will need us, we will need you._

He wakes up with tears pooling in his eyes. The high is completely gone, and there’s an ache in his chest that pangs stubbornly, knocking inside his ribs, _insistent_. He still hears the whisper in his ears.

The dreams don’t stop. It follows him from the roads and mountains, into his days in Hawkins, always with the trees whispering, always near the quarry, always with a taller boy with brown eyes, looking back at him like he’s scared of him, or at least _scared_ of the trees that always crawl behind him, _asking_ him to come to him.

The trees whispered _cadenti porrigo dextram_ in his dreams.

He visits the quarry the first day he arrives, driving like he knows the road, like he’s been living here for a long time when it’s the first time he’s ever been here. It’s exactly what the dreams have shown him: the depth of the water, even the placement of the trees, and the big rock that’s lodged, hidden, behind the bushes. He should feel scared. He isn’t. He has the urge to _solve_ things. Or at least, knocks it around until it tells him its secrets.

Some nights, he would be in the middle of the trees. Some nights, in the edge of the quarry. It takes him a few school days to find out who he is, him with hair silky brown, lankier figure, all limbs and big, doe eyes. It has a name after he met him at school, in the basketball court. Tommy, one of the kids that’s been on his ass since he first walked in, says that his name is Steve Harrington, _King Steve_ , and that he’s been off sick for a few days.

So Billy _knocks_ him around.

Tries to invite his attention.

_Look at me. Don’t you know me from the dreams?_

Because he had recognized Steve Harrington; it isn’t supposed to be far-fetched to assume that Harrington recognizes _him_ too.

And who could blame Billy, really? The dreams have been giving him visions upon visions of the boy in front of him, who always looks vulnerable and is always planning to jump into the quarry.

But Steve Harrington doesn’t look vulnerable. He looks like he’ll bite back, push back, if he gets knocked around. The lines between the boy in the real world and in the dream world don’t overlap. He’s a ghost in the form of a human in Billy’s dreams, like a mirror image that’s off center.

It’s fucking weird.

It’s fucking _interesting_.

It makes Billy want to get closer, want to shove Harrington even more until he breaks him, want to put his pieces together into one image that Billy can understand. Wants to solve mystery of the exhaustion behind those eyes that slips away when he’s with other people, like he’s hiding the darkness under his clothes, like he’s running away from something.

After that, Billy keeps dreaming. Of a big bird flying over the night sky, eclipsing the moon, of a crystal-raven, beaming purple right, in the woods. He dreams of a dog-like creature roaring from below the current of the quarry, feral and dangerous.

Steve Harrington is always in his dreams.

And now he’s in reality, too, and who could blame Billy if he’s searching off him in school hallways, in classes, in the court, in _parties_?

His subconscious is fucking _obsessed_ and his brain copes by drinking every sight of him.

The boy of his dreams has a name and a scent that sticks to the leather of his backseat. He _pretended_ like he has no idea about the monsters, about who Billy is, and Billy’s annoyed about it.

He _hates_ it when people lie to him.

He’s in the woods again in his dream, but today, for the first time in a while, there’s no sight of that brown eyes looking back at him. He’s completely alone. The trees are stark white against the dark, and he lights up the cigarette that he has between his lips with the tip of his finger. The fire burns in front of his face. It’s almost _too_ real, except he can tell that it’s a dream, because he knows he’s a fucking magician, but the trees never talk to him before.

_Magician_. The trees whisper, calling him. _We’re dying. Help us._

It doesn’t sound like a request, it sounds like a command, and Billy doesn’t do well with that. If he wants to hear a command, he wouldn’t be sleeping, he would be awake, trying to get his father to go into his fits of rage.

“I don’t want to help you,” he says.

_You have to help us. Your father is killing us_.

“I know about that, but that doesn’t mean I will help you,” he replies darkly. As if he would.

_You will let us in, be our vessel, and we will help each other_.

“I don’t need your help,” he barks. “I don’t want _anyone_ in my head.”

_You will_.

He wakes with teeth stabbing his tongue, and he wakes up with hate in his chest, because of course, it’s his fucking luck that the forest _wants_ the child to stop his insane fucking father. Because magic doesn’t do _subtlety_ , it deals with the dramatic, and it’s why so many people lost their mind over it, and it’s why Billy doesn’t do magic anymore, even though he can, because he’s seen what it does to his mother, to his _father_ , to Susan even.

But magic is power, and power _seduces_ and of fucking course it entices him to work by connecting his dreams to the most beautiful boy he’s ever seen.

Not that he has much to complain about that.

Neil collapses from the table in the middle of his coffee. Susan hasn’t come home yet from her shift. Max is not around, probably with her new friends. But Billy’s around. He hears the sound of body hitting the ground, and he runs out of the room. The lights on his home, above their heads, starts flickering in rhythm: _on, off, on off_. He grits his teeth. He’s not scared, he tells himself. He’s seen this before. He’s seen this so many times over the year.

Max might have enough balls to face his father, but she’s always holed up in her room when this happens. When the electricity fails, Neil’s body faltered from solid to illusion, she closes her door, locks it two times, and pretends she doesn’t hear.

But Billy has been dealing with this for so long.

Once upon a time, before Max and Susan came into the picture, his father pushed the limits of his body too much for _magic_ , and it had killed him. He had been dead for one second when he begged to God, or whatever it is that answered him, to let him _live_. And it had answered, happily, because as always, magic is _seduction_.

And now, every once in a while, the entity uses his father’s desire to live to do his bidding.

_WE WANT YOU TO KILL THEM NOW._

_KILL._

_KILL._

_KILL THE FOREST!_

_NO FAILURE._

_OR DEATH. DEATH FOR YOU, NEIL HARGROVE._

Billy thinks: _fucking dramatic, this entity is_. But by the time the light stops flickering, his hand is trembling, and he just can’t get it to stop.

Billy’s always the one who has to deal with his father.

They’re standing in the woods near the quarry, the woods that _hums_ when it recognizes him, with language that only the two of them understands. Billy doesn’t need the dream to know what it wants. The forest doesn’t need his words to tell him what he should do.

Someday, he’s going to kill Neil Hargrove.

These days, it seems like an inevitability than a promise, like driving too fast in a crowded high-way waiting for a crash, like chugging whiskey too quick waiting to puke, like using too much magic in one ley line until it feels like the earth is fighting back, pushing them back into their body until their bones shake and Billy’s left choking by the sheer energy that hits him. Begging to stop.

He wants to tell Neil to stop. But these days, as he watches his old man forces an entirety of magical forest into doing his bidding, using gigantic amount of power that he doesn’t have, a _mad man_ , trying to cheat death once more just because he thinks his time is not over, Billy’s not sure words can reach him.

Neil hadn’t been a good magician. He takes and takes, and uses, doesn’t give, doesn’t _listen_.

But Billy does.

He looks at the forest and thinks, _fine_.

_Go the fuck in, then_.

The power approaches him rather than hits him, like he’s stepping into a suit that fits so well to him. He can hear and see beyond the forest, can see a pair of lovers in the forest, lost, and wet. He can hear the roar of the dog creature in the distance, attacking kids and a doe-eyed boy inside a rusting corpse of a school bus.

The kind of knowledge that rushes inside him, like a wild thing, allows him to _know_ what he should do rather than tells him.

He whistles.

The dogs run to him, obeying. The woods allow the lovers to be let out.

In front of him, Neil Hargrove collapses in pain and in exhaustion. The forest had denied him access to its magic. He passes out, and somewhere, from the depth of the quarry, Billy hears something _shiver_. He hears something whisper, weak, but building.

_WHOEVER YOU ARE, VESSEL, WE WILL FIND YOU_.

It’s a promise.

Billy smiles, wolfish, the newfound power like lightning inside his body. He’s giddy with it, almost high. It feels better than hitting any drugs. It feels better than alcohol. He doesn’t think about how many people went crazy because of magic.

He just wants to stop thinking, for once, and just _do_.

Just _takes_.

He’s smoking at his porch when the maroon Beemer stops in front of his house. Neil is inside his room, being fussed by Susan. Susan doesn’t know the situation, but she’s seen Neil passed out like this enough to know that it’s from magic rather than anything else. Billy walks, slowly, almost theatrical, to the driver side of the car, and _waits_.

Steve Harrington rolls down his window and stares back at him. From his eyes, there’s anger, but there’s also sadness, and he looks like the boy of Billy’s dreams. That fills Billy with amusement. With intrigue. Does Harrington need the adrenaline of the creatures of his dreams to be able to crack his mask? Does he need to do that?

Because Billy _can_ do that, now.

“A bit weird for a high schooler to be with a middle schooler at this time of the night, doesn’t it?” he asks. Even though he knows why Steve is here dropping off Max. But he’s still Billy Hargrove, though the forest is a part of him, now, living inside his head.

“Don’t worry, nothing’s up. I just happen to be at the Byers’ and Max was there,” Steve replies calmly. “I offered her a ride. You can ask her. I did nothing else untoward.”

“C’mon, _Billy._ He’s just dropping me off.”

He knows, Max. He wants to gesture at her to just go inside, but Max has always pushed back against him, and he doesn’t want to get distracted just yet. “You look pale. You sure you’re okay, Harrington?” He trails his finger on Steve’s shoulder, not quite touching, but he knows Steve can feel it. “You sure you’re not lying?”

“ _Billy_.”

“Yeah, alright, give me a fucking moment, shitbird,” he yells at her. Get the message, Max, Goddamnit. He loves her, but she needs to understand that he's not the monster she should keep all her friends from.

Harrington’s expression is still calm. He’s just staring back. He still doesn’t recognize him. “I’m leaving,” he says. His hand reaches to roll the window back up, but Billy puts his hand on it. Hard.

Preventing Steve Harrington from running, from hiding, yet again.

He whistles the same tone he’s used to lure the creatures away.

The sight of Steve’s surprise is delightful. It’s almost like his façade cracks completely, even just for a moment.

“Be careful, King Steve,” he says. “Lots of monsters out there.”

Then he lets go. Because he doesn’t need Steve Harrington in the real world, that denies him, that doesn’t recognize him, that looks at him disinterestedly, whose eyes gloss over him like he's not interested, like he's not worth the time of the day, who lies to him and himself, who _hides_ away from his own power.

Steve can run, but Billy knows exactly where to find him.

He’ll see him in their dreams, of course.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, as always!
> 
> Find me at [Tumblr](http://anthonycrowley.co.vu) if you want to or something.


End file.
